Erasmus Prize awarded to Wikipedia; trouble on the Russian Wikipedia: The worldwide community wins a prestigious award while the Russian community struggles with government interference.
Russian Wikipedia: articles banned by government watchdog, editor banned from Wikipedia
The emblem of Roskomnadzor, Russia's Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications.
TASSreports that the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia (FSKN) has listed five articles on the Russian Wikipedia it wants blocked. FSKN said in a statement “Following the studies of the Russian language Wikipedia pages, four of them were recognized as forbidden ones.” Originally, five pages were listed for deletion but the fifth one had already been scrapped by the free online encyclopedia's administration. Russia’s media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, posted a tweet outlining which articles those were. (Nov. 24) L
Moscow Timesreports that four Wikipedia editors met with representatives of FSKN, Roskomnadzor, and Rospotrebnadzor "to formalize channels of communication between the website and state bodies". The organizer of this meeting, Samal, was indefinitely blocked. The Times referenced a message from the "official Twitter blog" of "Russian Wikipedia", apparently referring to this tweet from Wikimedia Russia. Samal's block log states that the editor was blocked for "destructive behavior: uncoordinated actions on behalf of the Community". (Nov. 27) G
The Russian Wikipedia has been the subject of growing government interference and was briefly blocked entirely by the government in August (see previous Signpostcoverage). Freedom House recently updated the status of internet freedom in Russia from "partly free" to "not free". These assessments are based on scores on a scale from 0 to 100 (0 = most free, 100 = least free); 0–30 are classed as "free", 31–60 as "partly free", 61–100 as "not free". Russia's score increased from 60 in 2014 to 62 in 2015.
Hoax edit upsets Irish factory town: The Belfast Telegraphreports that a hoax edit claiming that the bus manufacturer Wrightbus would be sold prompted rumors to spread through the town of Ballymena, causing Wrightbus employees to fear their jobs would be lost. (Nov. 27) G
Liverpool fans take City bashing to Wikipedia: Following Liverpool’s 4–1 thrashing of Manchester City at the City of Manchester Stadium, a Liverpool fan (or set of fans) altered the stadium’s Wikipedia page. The fan(s) gave a new name to the stadium – Liverpool FC U19 training ground – while making the new Liverpool manager its owner. The changes also included listing Roberto Firmino as the stadium's groundsman, reflecting his dominant performance in the Liverpool rout. (Nov. 23) L
Wikipedia via Free Basics: At Medium, Nanjira Sambuli writes about the Free Basics app from the Internet.org partnership, intended to deliver affordable internet services to developing countries. She writes『Over at the Wikipedia app, I couldn’t even see the option to edit a news article, let alone it redirecting me to the paid-for Internet. My hypothesis: it creates the notion that Wikipedia is to be consumed, and not necessarily contributed to. Imagine that carried across to Wikipedia as many of us know it!』(Nov. 22)
"Scientific Wikipedia" Idea deemed best idea at SeNSE Pitch Night Competition: An idea to create a ‘Scientific Wikipedia’ won top spot at the 2015 Pitch Night Competition, organized by SeNSE, a Baton Rouge–based non-profit organization supporting entrepreneurship. Matthew Loupe, an LSU electrical engineering graduate, came up with the idea to create an online scientific community where scientists can upload and share results of their experiments. (Nov. 20) L
Crew member accused of altering Wikipedia page to favor movie: According to a reportbyThe Washington Examiner, a crew member working on the documentary The Hunting Ground has been changing the film's Wikipedia page and other pages linked to the movie. The documentary covers rape on college campuses. Edits included changes to former FSU quarterback Jameis Winston's page and deleting content on Kinsman’s accusations, changes alleged to have made the articles support the story told by the film. The matter was raised by Jimbo Wales on his talk page and is being discussed at the administrators' noticeboard, where to date there is no consensus that the editor did anything wrong, given that he declared his conflict of interest on his user page and sought talk page agreement for the changes made. (Nov. 19) L, AK
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